Soundgarden has just been inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
A new album, featuring Chris Cornell’s final work with the group, is being finished. And Ben Shepherd has spoken about the 2017 tour during which the Soundgarden frontman allegedly took his own life.
But let’s talk Hall of Fame first.
Putting aside the question of whether the Hall of Fame really means anything or whether it’s any true metric for an artist’s legacy or impact, at least the monumental group has been recognised by the high-profile institution.
Even if it’s a bit late.
I couldn’t understand, for example, why a group like Foo Fighters was recognised by the Hall of Fame before Soundgarden.
No slight against Dave Grohl’s band – I’m a Foo Fighters fan. But a band like Soundgarden should’ve been acknowledged as much as a decade ago. Maybe around the time Nirvana was inducted in 2014.
It’s also a shame that Chris Cornell isn’t alive to see his band receive this particular recognition.
As I recall, Cornell was previously at the Hall of Fame to help induct another artist (Heart, I believe)
But again, it can be questioned whether the Hall of Fame is necessarily all that significant.
Soundgarden’s induction appeared to be a highly charged affair.
Jim Carrey, a super-fan, gave the main speech. All the band members were on stage, along with Mike McCready from Pearl Jam and Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains, with Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile taking vocal duties again for performances of Black Hole Sun and Rusty Cage.
Both singers were very good; Carlile’s performance was particularly emotional, however. But maybe it’s also because that song gets me every time I hear it.
The surviving members of Soundgarden were in attendance and spoke onstage: including founding member Hiro Yamamoto. The original bassist’s inclusion was nice, especially remembering how the original Nirvana drummer Chad Channing was excluded from Nirvana’s Hall of Fame event in 2014.
Most of the Soundgarden induction event can be seen here.
Meanwhile, the long talked about prospect of a final Soundgarden album featuring Chris Cornell appears to now be a reality – some eight years after his death.
The collection of demos, recorded and being worked on by Cornell and the group prior to the ill-fated 2017 tour, was going to be the basis for another album to follow 2012’s King Animal.
But the group found itself mired in legal disputes with Cornell’s wife over the rights to the material.
This wholly unnecessary battle has since been settled: and the band has been able to pursue the process of mixing and mastering the recordings.
There’s no word on expected release date, but it’s going to be so great, and so interesting, to hear this final album.
I still think their ‘comeback’ record, King Animal (2012), was a magnificent collection of songs: particularly for a group that hadn’t been active for sixteen years. I’m still listening to songs from that album regularly.
To hear new music (though it isn’t ‘new’ to them, I guess) from a unit of musicians as great as Matt Cameron, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Chris Cornell is going to be a gift. And credit has to be given to the remaining band members for pushing to make it happen: especially when Vicky Cornell was apparently being such a problem.
Meanwhile Ben Shepherd recently spoke to Guitar World and said something about the 2017 tour that ended abruptly with Cornell’s death.
I haven’t really seen Thayil, Cameron or Shepherd talk much about those events, perhaps understandably.
But the bassist said that he knew something bad was going to happen on that tour. Specifically he says ‘the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen… Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it.’
He doesn’t elaborate further than that: I would like to know more specifically why he felt that way. Whether, for example, Cornell or any of the others felt some degree of disinclination about doing the tour: or whether Shepherd was having something more like a premonition.
But Shepherd’s comment arguably suggests there was some problematic element or dark cloud hanging over that tour – and that he was unsettled about it before the tour had even started.
Uncertainty, and even suspicion, about the nature of Chris Cornell’s death still runs deeply among the fanbase even eight years later.
I wrote about some of that at the time, but my view remained inconclusive. I’m still unsure now.
I entirely understand why a lot of fans remain suspicious about what happened and why. I share some of those doubts. I just haven’t been able to reach a definitive opinion.
And possibly I find the subject upsetting, which is why I don’t continue to interrogate it.
In any case, it’s nice to see Soundgarden’s musical legacy still being recognised; and Cornell still being remembered.
